My Year of the War eBook

From the variety of screams of big shells and little
shells and screams harrowingly close and reassuringly
high, which were indicated as ours, one was warranted
in suggesting that the British were doing considerable
artillery preparation themselves.

“We must give them as good as they send—­and
better.”

Better seemed correct.

“Those close ones you hear are doubtless meant
for the front German trench, which accounts for their
low trajectory; the others for their support trenches
or any battery-positions that our planes have located.”
We could not see where the British shells were striking.
We could judge only of the accuracy of some of the
German fire. Considering the storm being visited
on the support trench which we had just left, we were
more than ever glad to be out of it. Artillery
is the war burglar’s jemmy; but it has to batter
the house into ruins and blow up the safe and kill
most of the family before the burglar can enter.
Clouds of dust rose from the explosions; limbs of trees
were lopped off by tornadoes of steel hail.

“There! Look at that tree!”

In front of a portion of the British support trench
a few of a line of stately shade trees were still
standing. A German shell, about an eight-inch,
one judged, struck fairly in the trunk of one about
the same height from the ground as the lumberman sinks
his axe in the bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread
out from the point of explosion. Through it as
through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green
wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem
is severed by a sharp blow from a walking-stick.
The body of the tree was carried across the splintered
stump with crushing impact from the power of its flight,
plus the power of the burst of the explosive charge
which broke the shell-jacket into slashing fragments;
and the towering column of limbs, branches, and foliage
laid its length on the ground with a majestic dignity.
Which shows what one shell can do, one of three which
burst not far away at the same time. In time,
the shells would get all the trees; make them into
chips and splinters and toothpicks.

“I’d rather that it would hit a tree-trunk than my trunk,” said L------.

“But you would not have got it as badly as the
tree,” said the officer reassuringly. “The
substance would have been too soft for sufficient
impact for a burst. It would have gone right through!”

XXII
More Best Day

At battalion headquarters in the front trenches the
battalion surgeon had just amputated an arm which
had been mauled by a shell.

“Without any anaesthetic,” he explained.
“No chance if we sent him back to the hospital.
He would die on the way. Stood it very well.
Already chirking up.”

A family practitioner at home, the doctor, when the
war began, had left his practice to go with his Territorial
battalion. He retains the family practitioner’s
cheery, assuring manner. He is the kind of man
who makes you feel better immediately he comes into
the sick-room; who has already made you forget yourself
when he puts his finger on your pulse.